KDE Spectacle
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 8 screenshot tools by recommenders
Recommended as a fully featured, native screenshot tool on KDE that works well on Wayland. Some critics say common settings were moved behind menus after an update.
Recommended as a fully featured, native screenshot tool on KDE that works well on Wayland. Some critics say common settings were moved behind menus after an update.
28 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 21
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 21 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Native KDE tool, works well
“KDE has its own native screenshot tool called spectacle that I find works as least a well, if not better, than flameshot.”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Flameshot” “It has the same features as Flameshot and is .. well, native.”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Flameshot” “Kooha and KDE's own Spectacle work on Wayland fine”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support” - Comment from 8 May 2026 in “The surprisingly complex journey to text-selectable client-side generated PDFs”
- Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Flameshot”
Reliable, does what people need
“Honestly the best screenshot software I've used so far is KDE's built-in printscreen thingy.”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Flameshot” “spectacle is everything I want in a screenshot tool and I do not want it to be any other way”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma” “Still works, never a problem or glitch at all.”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Windows 3.1 tiled background .bmp archive” Built-in annotation and cropping
“Most users will be perfectly happy with the included KDE application for screenshots/screen capture (it is really fully featured, much better than the default options for Windows or macOS).”
Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “KDE going all-in on a Wayland future” “kde has all that built directly into the screenshot utility. highlighting, text, cropping, etc.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID” “It has the same features as Flameshot and is .. well, native.”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Flameshot” Shows preview and saved location
“It shows the screenshot it just took, tells me where it’s been saved, lets me do stuff with it”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma” “Also a nice thing about Spectacle is that the window persists after you take a screenshot”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Flameshot”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Settings buried behind menus
“they changed the app since Trixie was released and buried a lot of the really common settings behind menus”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma” “I was less than happy to have my default changed”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma” Some features broken or failing
“The "New Recording" button seems to be broken. It does nothing.”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support” “silently failed to copy/paste”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it”
Other screenshot tools people recommend
The four most recommended other screenshot tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flameshot | 44 | 19 | 70% | 4 | 5 yrs6 owners | Approved |
| KDE SpectacleThis page | 21 | 7 | 75% | 8 | — | Approved |
| ShareX | 10 | 2 | 83% | 5 | — | Approved |
| Windows Snipping Tool | 7 | 13 | 35% | 5 | — | — |
| CleanShot X | 6 | 2 | 75% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
25 of the 28 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It lacks good shortcut keys for annotations.”
“kde has all that built directly into the screenshot utility. highlighting, text, cropping, etc.”
“Snapshot for being just so darn handy for both screenshots and screen captures”
“You get that out of the box on an up to date KDE”
“Still works, never a problem or glitch at all.”
“I have had problems with Spectacle related to permissions on Wayland”
“silently failed to copy/paste”
“I was less than happy to have my default changed”
“This approach seems objectively superior to your suggestion.”
“spectacle is everything I want in a screenshot tool and I do not want it to be any other way”
“they changed the app since Trixie was released and buried a lot of the really common settings behind menus”
“It shows the screenshot it just took, tells me where it’s been saved, lets me do stuff with it”
“Also a nice thing about Spectacle is that the window persists after you take a screenshot”
“KDE has its own native screenshot tool called spectacle that I find works as least a well, if not better, than flameshot.”
“Spectacle for KDE is also a good choice.”
“I tried to switch to it from Flameshot a few months back since it has all the features that I use regularly in Flameshot but ran into an issue where it would 2-3 times longer than Flameshot to start up”
“Honestly the best screenshot software I've used so far is KDE's built-in printscreen thingy.”
“It has the same features as Flameshot and is .. well, native.”
“it’s been great with window managers”
“I just use Swish or Spectacle”
“Yeah same here. Kind of shitty.”
“these options are checkboxes, you can enable as many at once as you like”
“Most users will be perfectly happy with the included KDE application for screenshots/screen capture (it is really fully featured, much better than the default options for Windows or macOS).”
“The "New Recording" button seems to be broken. It does nothing.”
“Kooha and KDE's own Spectacle work on Wayland fine”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.